WASHINGTON -- The United States constantly reviews its joint military exercises with South Korea to make sure their forces are properly trained and prepared to meet threats, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday.

"We always say that we know we have to, our forces have got to be ready to fight tonight and we are constantly looking at the training events to make sure that they are appropriate and they are properly scaled to the threats and the challenges," the spokesman, John Kirby, said at a press briefing.

The remarks come after Ely Ratner, nominee for assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said he, if confirmed, would review the United States' joint military exercises to maintain readiness of US forces in and around the Korean Peninsula.

The US has some 28,500 troops station in South Korea.

North Korea periodically denounces joint US-South Korea military exercises as war rehearsals that it says will continue to hinder inter-Korean relations and dialogue.

Many in South Korea have voiced a need for the US and South Korea to scale down or even cancel their joint military drills to foster dialogue with Pyongyang amid a US outreach to the reclusive country.

Sung Kim, US special envoy for North Korea, on Monday (Seoul time) said his country is willing to meet with North Korea " anywhere, anytime without preconditions."

The Defense Department spokesman said he had no changes in military training to announce, only noting the US "constantly" reviews and assesses its military training programs "given the strategic environment" of the Korean Peninsula.

In Seoul, South Korea's defense ministry said that close consultations are under way to fix the timing, scale and other details of an annual summertime combined exercise that the two countries have held usually in August.

"South Korea and the US will make a decision on the exercise after taking into consideration all related factors, such as the COVID-19 situation, the maintenance of a combat readiness posture, the transfer of the wartime operational control, and supporting diplomacy for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," ministry spokesperson Boo Seung-chan told a regular briefing on Tuesday.

The two sides usually stage major combined exercises twice a year -- in around March and in August, along with smaller-scale drills throughout the year.

This year's springtime program took place in March in a scaled-back manner amid the pandemic. (Yonhap)